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WASHINGTON — Improvised explosive devices, like those that have killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, pose a growing threat across Texas and the United States, leading to calls for urgent cooperation between U.S. military experts and civilian law enforcement officers. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, director of the Pentagon's so-called Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, alerted Congress in classified testimony this month to the mounting IED threat at home. He also highlighted the challenges his team faces trying to train stateside law enforcement agencies to detect, disarm and defeat the devices. “The domestic IED...

A pitiful, malnourished abandoned drug horse, used to move drugs across the Mexican border into Arizona, was so weak it kept trying to sit back on its hind legs because its front legs were too weak to hold it up, according to [the] NY TIMES. Brad Cowan, a 28 year livestock officer with the Arizona Department of Agriculture, and his partner had to carry it into a horse trailer. “I’d get angry when I’d see the condition these horses were in,” he said. Horrible sores from poorly fitting make shift saddles become infected, and their hooves get severely cut and...

As if the threat of deadly drug cartels in Mexico wasn't enough, some of them are joining forces with Middle East terror groups. "Hezbollah are absolute masters at identifying existing smuggling infrastructures," says former DEA Chief of Operations Mike Braun, adding that the group "is developing relations with those responsible for operating those smuggling operations and then forming close relations with them, so that they can move anything they have an interest into virtually anywhere in the world." That comment comes from former DEA Chief of Operations Mike Braun. He goes on to tell me that the Middle East terror...

Here is our 2 billionth "wake up call" about Mexico and drug cartel violence. Just how many more do we need before we truly wake up and aggressively face this issue????? Now the cartels are hiring people to assassinate in the USA! (Mr. President, please listen to your Secretary of State Hillary Clinton! She is right about Mexico and you are wrong. Mexico is like Colombia of 20 years ago...and it is inching into our country.) --- Three arrested in Palmdale, CA were found with 2 AR-15s and a thousand rounds of ammo.... Lieutenant in the Arrellano Felix sought for...

One US immigration and customs agent was killed and a second was wounded in a suspected ambush in Mexico. Life has become horribly cheap in Mexico's drug wars, but when the victim is an American special agent, the price rises sharply. Tuesday's shootings have forced US-Mexican relations up Washington's list of priorities, even as the Obama administration responds to the tumultuous events in the Middle East. "If it turns out that these two agents were directly targeted, it changes everything," says one US law enforcement official. ICE has about 30 agents in Mexico, and those on permanent assignment are authorised...

"Mexico's Gun Supply and the 90 Percent Myth is republished with permission of STRATFOR." For several years now, STRATFOR has been closely watching developments in Mexico that relate to what we consider the three wars being waged there. Those three wars are the war between the various drug cartels, the war between the government and the cartels and the war being waged against citizens and businesses by criminal Read more: Mexico's Gun Supply and the 90 Percent Myth | STRATFOR

The female police chief of Guadalupe, Mexico, has not been seen or heard from since being abducted two days before Christmas. Erika Gandara was a former radio dispatcher for the police department in the town of 9,000, which is just across the U.S. border, one mile from Fabens, Texas. The previous police chief was murdered and decapitated. ...Many of the houses in Guadalupe have been burned down by the cartels.

EL PASO, Texas -- A car lot in Juarez. That's where 15-year-olds Carlos Mario Gonzalez Bermudez and Juan Echeveeri Luna, both students in El Paso, were killed by gunmen there Saturday. Gonzalez Bermudez's mother told our news partners - channel 44 in Juarez - the teens were buying a set of car rims. At some point, gunmen looking for the owner, opened fire on him and the teens. Gonzalez Bermudez and his family had just moved to El Paso to get away from the violence. He was a sophomore at Cathedral. Echeveeri used to go there, but transferred to Radford.

Mexican military patrols were on the lookout Tuesday for a group of Zeta gunmen that had entered Matamoros with plans to carry out several attacks. Locals reported seeing the military convoys, which were larger and more heavily armed than usual, patrol the city keeping an eye on high-profile vehicles. A source with firsthand knowledge of criminal activity in Tamaulipas stated that a group of approximately 50 Zetas were able to enter the city and hide amid the confusion of the weekend fighting between the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel and the Mexican military. On Monday afternoon, the source confirmed a clash...

On January 25, an American photographer narrowly escaped death when he was ambushed by cartel members and led the henchmen on a high-speed chase to the International Border Zone, just south of Nogales, Arizona. Matthew Besinger, a Los Angeles-based photographer was working on a photograph book about the Sonoran desert when he was ambushed by four young men. His vehicle suffered significant damage during his daring escape which ended at the U.S./Mexico border near Nogales. Nogales Department of Homeland Security spokesman, Juan Osorio confirmed an incident took place regarding Besinger, but would not comment on the details. The Tucson Sector...

The news that several major Cruise Lines are leaving California and/or cutting back cruises to the “Mexican Riviera” presented a dilemma to the media. The story caught them between two facts, neither of which they wanted to report. They tried quarantining it and smothering the story to mitigate the damage to California’s Democrat, but they had to explain why the lines were leaving the Ports of San Diego and Los Angeles. It was a genuine lose – lose for the steno pool. Nevertheless, here’s the elements of this story not being reported. Why they’re sailing away The first reason the...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Gunmen stormed two neighboring homes and massacred 13 young people at a birthday party in the latest large-scale attack in this violent border city, even as a new government strategy seeks to restore order with social programs and massive police deployments. Attackers in two vehicles pulled up to the houses in a lower-middle-class Ciudad Juarez neighborhood late Friday and opened fire on about four dozen partygoers gathered for a 15-year-old boy's birthday party.

SAN DIEGO -- When a major Mexican drug cartel opened a branch office here on the California side of the border, U.S. authorities tapped into their cellphones - then listened, watched and waited. Their surveillance effort captured more than 50,000 calls over six months, conversations that reached deep into Mexico and helped build a sprawling case against 43 suspects - including Mexican police and top officials - allegedly linked to a savage trafficking ring known as the Fernando Sanchez Organization...But U.S. law enforcement officials say the most worrisome thing about the Fernando Sanchez Organization was how aggressively it moved to...

The wife of a man allegedly killed by pirates on a lake that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border will return to FBI offices today to resume a marathon session of questions from Mexican authorities. Tiffany Hartley, wife of David Hartley, who is missing after the jet ski incident Sept. 30 on Falcon Lake, endured eight hours of questioning by Mexican investigators Friday. She has said she refused a request to come to Mexico for further questioning, out of fear of a possible arrest. "I just don't think that's a wise decision," Hartley told "Good Morning America." "I think they do believe...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. can do more to help Mexico battle drug cartels that have started operating more like terrorists and insurgent groups. "It is one of my highest priorities," Clinton said Friday during a speech in San Francisco at the nonpartisan Commonwealth Club. "This is one of the most difficult fights that any country faces today. We saw it over the last couple of decades in Colombia." "We are watching drug traffickers undermine and corrupt governments in Central America, and we are watching the brutality and barbarity of their assaults on governors and mayors, the...

"Mexican officials said Sunday they still had no suspects and no body following the disappearance of a McAllen man widely presumed dead after his wife reported the couple came under attack by “pirates” 10 days earlier on the Mexican side of Falcon Reservoir."

OAXACA, Mexico — The mayor-elect of a small town near Oaxaca state's Pacific coast has been shot to death, the latest in a string of politicial figures who have been slain in Mexico this year. Antonio Jimenez Banos, 47, who would have taken office in January in Martires de Tacubaya, was killed Friday afternoon by an assailant as he was returning to his farm. He was hit in the head and chest apparently with a shotgun, prosecutors said. Eleven sitting mayors have been killed so far this year in Mexico. Two of them were also in Oaxaca, but most of...

(CBS/AP) Mexican news media are reporting that Mexican police officials have identified two persons of interest in connection with the shooting of an American tourist on Falcon Lake, on the U.S.-Mexico border. Tamaulipas State Police Commander Juan Carlos Ballesteros told El Universal newspaper on Saturday that authorities believe Juan Pedro Saldivar-Farias and Jose Manuel Saldivar-Farias killed Hartley. Ballesteros told the paper that the two men are accused in numerous crimes in Mexico, including burning homes, robbing businesses and several homicides. CBS Affiliate KGBT says it is clear how the men were identified as suspects, and that authorities have not released...

With 48 slain in first 6 months of 2010, 2009 toll of 80 may be exceededForty-eight Americans were killed in Mexico during the first six months of 2010 — a deadly pace that appears likely to exceed any previous year of homicides on record, according to the Houston Chronicle's analysis of the U.S. State Department's death registry. The tally doesn't include two Texans reported killed Sept. 30 in separate incidents in isolated areas of Tamaulipas, where the terrorist group known as the Zetas has been warring with their Gulf Cartel rivals in communities all along the Southeast Texas border. A...

BROWNSVILLE – Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia says the border violence has officially crossed over into the Valley. Two Tamaulipas men were assassinated inside a truck Friday. The chief of police says the investigation has led them to believe this wasn’t a crime committed by someone in the US. “This was a hit ordered by the cartel,” he says. Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos isn’t surprised to see spillover violence in Brownsville. He says, “it was a matter of time before it trickled down to our community.” Residents say they didn't think it would become a reality. One woman who...